Giraffes in the Philippines a Dictator's Legacy

With a taste for tropical fruit and a reputation as thieves, a herd of giraffes on a remote Philippine island is one of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos's most intriguing legacies.

The 20 giraffes, along with dozens of zebra and antelope, are descendants of a boatload of animals imported from Africa in the 1970s -- supposedly in a Noah's Ark-style effort to save them from extinction.

They were brought to tiny Calauit Island, where under a Marcos decree the locals were moved elsewhere to make way for the strange new inhabitants and bamboo forests were cleared so the lowlands resembled the savannahs of Kenya.

Today just over 100 African animals -- roughly the same number as the original batch -- roam the island.

They are being promoted to tourists as offering a glimpse of Africa in a remarkable tropical setting.

Visitors who make the trek to Calauit, about 300 kilometers southeast of Manila, have the unique chance to sleep in an open-walled gazebo and wake to giraffes and zebra grazing just a few meters away.

"This has been an amazing experience, we'd never seen giraffes," said Gleng Buele, 25, a nurse from Manila who, with three friends, flew to a rural airport then drove three hours on a rough road and took a boat ride to reach Calauit.

But, like so many tales surrounding Marcos and his 20-year rule of the country that ended with a "people power" revolution in 1986, the official account of the Philippines' African animals is at odds with reality.

The true story is Marcos and his friends wanted to start a tourism business, according to Tony Parkinson, an Englishman who ran an animal "translocation" venture for zoos from Kenya in the 1970s and organized the Philippine shipment.

"None of them were endangered... that was all nonsense," said Parkinson, 75, who has lived in the Philippines since starting the project.

"We would never have put them on an island like that if they were endangered."

And instead of being a tropical paradise for endangered animals as promoted, the island refuge is fraught with problems.

Inbreeding is a concern because no new animals have been brought in since the first ones arrived 35 years ago, while three species of antelope originally imported have died out, according to the island's manager, Froilan Sariego.

Government budget cuts also mean a skeleton staff of 34 maintains the park, down from more than 300 when Marcos's enthusiasm for the project was at its peak, Sariego said.

"Lack of funds is our biggest challenge," said Sariego, who rose from a government clerk to become park manager during a career spent nearly entirely on the island.

The last of three tractors that were used to clear the tropical vegetation so that the animals could roam unimpeded broke down this year, according to workers on the island.

With no money to repair the tractors, life is becoming particularly hard for the giraffes that have long suffered from bamboo wounds and subsequent infections while trying to graze in the unfamiliar vegetation.

Meanwhile the villagers who used to live on the island are back and, according to Sariego, steadily killing off the animals either to eat or sell their meat, or to stop them from eating the villagers' crops.

"Our patrol people are scared to confront them. We are not equipped with weapons," Sariego said.

Standing in a patch of savannah-like land, Sariego retold the story of losing the island's biggest giraffe, "Binoy", four years ago.

"Binoy ate the crops of the settlers," Sariego said, referring to the villagers who returned to the island after Marcos was overthrown and now mostly live as subsistence farmers and fisherfolk along the coast.

"We found him with a spear in his side. He died eight hours after we found him."

Sariego said another giraffe disappeared in mysterious circumstances this year.

And he blamed the settlers for the complete demise of the impala antelope, a few dozen of which had survived on the island until as recently as five or six years ago.

"The settlers could sell the impala meat in the local markets because it could be mixed with Calamian deer," Sariego said, referring to a local animal that has thrived on Calauit alongside the Africans.

One of the leaders of the village communities, Dante Dabuit, acknowledged there was much frustration at the animals eating their crops.

"Giraffes cause so much damage. With bananas, once they get at them, there is nothing left for us, They also eat the cashew leaves, and our papayas," said Dabuit.

"Even when we put up fences, the giraffes have long necks and they can reach over, or sometimes they just destroy the fences."

Nevertheless, Dabuit denied that the villagers, who number about 1,200, killed the animals.

"If the people really wanted to exterminate them, they could hunt them all down in a week. There are not that many of them really," he said.

Dabuit also said the villagers had accepted that the African animals were now part of the local environment.

He said the villagers were focused on brokering a deal with the provincial government that would see the locals and animals co-exist peacefully.

But even if the human-animal conflict is resolved, inbreeding may eventually end the experiment, according to Theresa Mundita Lim, the environment bureau's wildlife chief.

"If they want to continue the existence of the African animals, they would have to do some genetic infusion. It means bringing in more African animals," Lim said.

But Sariego said that, with so little money being spent on the project, he could not envision more animals being imported from Africa.

Environment groups would also oppose such a move, according to Michael Dougherty, a Bangkok-based spokesman for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world's biggest green organization.

"The project is absolutely out of line with long-existing IUCN policies on invasive species and re-introductions," Dougherty said.

The group's opposition is significant because local authorities say in promotional material the project began in response to an appeal from the IUCN to save endangered African animals.

Asked to reflect on the prospect of having spent 35 years on Calauit based on a dictator's lie, park manager Sariego said there were many reasons to remain positive.

Most importantly, the island had been spared the environmental degradation seen across the Philippines because the government had preserved it as a wildlife sanctuary.

"We have protected this island for future generations," he said, pointing out that many indigenous species had also benefited, including the endangered Calamian deer and many bird species.